1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left

Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock's ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it.--Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue
1967 . . . in which our hero looks down from the future at his squeaky realm of boyhood, a world of Day-Glo sunsets, and would-be denizens of music and the mind. Cometh the year, cometh the groover.--Johnny Marr, guitarist and cosongwriter of the Smiths
It's daft (but smart), ever so surreal, and pure Hitchcock . . . Yes, this is a book for Hitchcock fans and music geeks generally. But it's more. It's an Anglophile's dream, set in the world of cloistered boarding schools and the quite English eccentricities of family life . . . After giving us so many memorable songs, he's given us music on the page, a singular memoir that was one wild year--and a lifetime of memories--in the making.-- "Chapter 16"
Robyn Hitchcock belongs to an almost extinct species, 'The Totally Original Artist, ' once relatively commonplace, now only occasionally glimpsed in the dense tree canopy of the pop rainforest. Mysterious, elusive, a kind of rock 'n' roll olingo . . . 1967 presents his many fans with a tantalizing print-bite of how he wound up in those trees and in so doing (whether he likes it or not) became a National Treasure.--Nick Lowe, singer-songwriter
A bright, nostalgic look at the exhilaration of 1967, this book--illustrated throughout with Hitchcock's surreal sketches--will appeal to not only the author's many fans but also anyone interested in the music and culture from the golden age of psychedelia. Wistfully reflective reading.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
British singer-songwriter Hitchcock wistfully reflects on boarding school and the music that shaped him in this captivating chronicle of the year he credits with sculpting his artistic sensibility . . . Hitchcock is loose, energetic company, writing with infectious enthusiasm about the liberatory sights and sounds that continue to inspire him. Readers need not be fans of Hitchcock's music to find this enchanting.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Robyn Hitchcock, the English singer and guitarist and former member of the Soft Boys and later the Egyptians, is a sui generis figure. No one quite like him exists in pop culture. His quirky memoir, 1967, focuses on a crucial year in his life--the titular 1967 when he was a precocious 14-year-old boy and left home for the first time to attend boarding school ... Like Hitchcock and his music, the memoir is wild, surreal, and wonderfully weird ... These small but important glimpses into his still-developing psyche add up to a portrait of a young burgeoning artist and point the way to the Robyn Hitchcock of this moment.-- "Booklist"